Merry Christmas from Lower Alabama! Winter has found us and taught us a few things about living in an RV full-time. Propane tanks need to be filled about every other week when the furnace runs frequently and the garden hose that brings the water to the trailer from the spigot will freeze quickly even though it doesn’t seem that cold outside. These inconveniences have not put a damper on our Christmas spirit, however, and for this post I will tell you the story of our Christmas tree.
We live in a state forest and are surrounded by pine trees but are not allowed to cut down any live trees. Living in a trailer we don’t have room for one inside anyhow, so we decided to dig up a small tree, keep it in a bucket until after Christmas and then replant it. On one of our morning walks we selected the perfect tree and marked it for later. In case you were not aware or maybe have forgotten, not all pine trees are made alike. Little River State Forest is mostly a longleaf pine forest so we don’t have any of the cute little triangle-shaped Christmas trees that we drew in first grade or find on a Christmas tree lot. Most of them look like this one – kind of shapeless and sparse.
We went back after lunch and Dan dug it up for me. Did I mention we live in a state forest? Our tree looked small enough so the root system shouldn’t have been too big, but we didn’t think about the hundreds of trees within a twenty foot radius of it. Dan prevailed though and we got it out without too much carnage, put it in its temporary housing (i.e. bucket), and took it back to the trailer.
 |
| Dan hard at work |
With memories of the Christmas tree in the Charlie Brown Christmas special I watched as a child (and actually watched the other night on ABC but was terribly disappointed because it had been edited from an hour long show to thirty minutes. I was upset because they edited out the part where Linus tells the Christmas story – but that is a whole other post) I set out to make decorations to make it sparkle. I strung some borrowed lights all around it but when I finished the branches were sagging under the weight so I took them off and put them straight up instead.
 |
| Before Deer |
I spent all afternoon stringing popcorn together and ended up with five strands, each about three feet long. Buddy thought I had two strands too many so when my attention was elsewhere he quietly ate two of them, string and all. He thought we could go without one more but I disagreed and rescued the third one. I put them on the tree and added some stars I had cut out and was pleased with what I had accomplished. But it seems everyone’s a critic and that night the deer decided the popcorn was too fluffy and proceeded to nibble it down so it wasn’t quite so big.
 |
| After Deer |
While I don’t think it will win any awards I thought it turned out kind of cute. It brings me joy when I see it and reminds me that Christmas is coming – what more can I ask for?
